Teachers could earn $130,000 to stop exodus from the profession

It comes as a crisis hits the profession as staff abandon classrooms looking for better paid jobs and new graduates avoid the career due to low pay.

Teachers could earn salaries as high as $130,000 in a plan to tackle the crisis hitting classrooms as staff abandon the profession and huge shortages loom.

The NSW government is considering sweeping reforms to tackle the mass exodus of teachers and entice new people into the profession, which includes addressing the pay issue as they hit a maximum salary of $117,600 during their career.

NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the government was examining introducing higher paid roles for outstanding teachers as they often move into management roles to secure higher pay and career progression, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The structure of our teaching profession should reflect our teachers, by being innovative, ambitious and modern, keeping more of our best teachers in the classroom,” she said.

She added the “model is not ‘performance pay’, this is about expanding the career options for teachers and keeping our best in the classroom”.

NSW Minister Education and Early Learning Sarah Mitchell. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

In NSW, an assistant principal makes $126,528, but moving to these higher paid roles including as principals, deputies and in head offices jobs means staff leave the classroom, despite the state needing an extra 3800 teachers by 2027.

The state’s plans come as Australia’s education ministers are set to meet on Friday to discuss the chronic teacher shortage plaguing the education system across the country.

Teacher shortages are expected to be particularly severe in high schools with demand outstripped by graduates by about 4100 in the next three years, with a lack of maths and science teachers particularly acute.

A report from the national Quality Initial Teacher Education Review found that lifting teacher’s pay by $30,000 would attract more people into the profession.

Currently, the NSW Teachers Federation is engaged in a long running pay dispute with the state government.

NSW teachers March on Parliament House in Sydney. Picture: John Grainger

Teachers have been on strike three times since December 2021 demanding better pay and conditions as the union seeks a pay rise of 5 per cent a year and an extra 2.5 per cent to recognise extra experience.

NSW Teachers Federation head Angelo Gavrielatos said in some cases teachers’ working conditions had not changed in 70 years, while unsustainable workloads and uncompetitive pay was fuelling the shortage crisis, which he said the government had ignored.

“Ten years of failed policies have brought us to the point of not being able to attract and retain the teacher we need,” he said.

“Covid has just made the disaster of the teacher shortage worse.”

NSW Teachers Federation head Angelo Gavrielatos. Picture: John Grainger

A parliamentary hearing into a shortage of teachers in NSW held last week heard nine out of 10 teachers said excessive workload was putting teachers off, and large numbers also said salary rates and the profession’s “diminished status” were to blame, according to a survey.

Earlier this month, Australia’s official agency for education quality called for big changes as the nation faces a countrywide teacher shortage.

The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership announced it will begin recruiting university-educated workers to earn while they learn on the job.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the number of teachers currently in training had dropped 16 per cent since 2012.

Mr Clare said the federal government was offering up incentives as high as $40,000 for the “best and brightest” university graduates to become teachers.